Dean Dennis: STRS Rewards Employees While Retirees Go Without COLA

PETITION UPDATE

https://www.change.org/p/ohio-state-house-respect-ohio-s-retired-teachers-restore-their-promised-cola/u/22755230?recruiter=4990641&utm_source=share_update&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=facebook_link 

STRS REWARDS EMPLOYEES WHILE RETIREES GO WITHOUT COLA

Dean Dennis

Cincinnati, OH

MAY 16, 2018 — STRS has seen fit to give annual performance bonuses to 94 employees. Believe it or not, 37 of these employees received bonuses of over $100,000 and 8 employees received annual bonuses of over a quarter of a million dollars. All this was in addition to their annual salaries. Could STRS see fit to give us our annual simple COLA? Of course not. The message STRS sends to us is, "let them eat cake." Ohio's Legislature needs to intervene and send a message to STRS.

We should all demand that the STRS Board, and our legislators, freeze all STRS salaries and suspend all STRS bonuses until STRS restores our COLA. This will certainly be brought up at the May 17th, STRS Board Meeting when the public is invited to speak. It is our contributions that are paying for their large bonuses.

STRS has created this problem. Keep in mind, STRS has always earned over 8% for every 30 year funding period on their investments. They created this paper shortfall by claiming they are only going to earn 7.45% going forward. This downward projected caused our COLA to be suspended; but not their bonuses. Incidentally, STRS earned 14.29% last year.